A Trifecta for Passover:
Chicken Soup, Matzo Balls and Farfel
Freeze to Make Passover a Breeze
By Lisa Segelman
If you’ve ever hosted a Passover seder (ritual feast held on the first two nights of the holiday) you know that it’s a seemingly endless endeavor of ritual items, traditional dishes, and recipes that have been passed down l”dor v dor— Hebrew for “from generation to generation”.
The seder is a challenge to prepare, especially since many seders have upwards of a dozen people in attendance. According to a Pew research study performed in 2020, six-in-ten U.S. Jewish people held or participated in a Seder in the year prior to the survey. What does that mean in real life? If people aren’t hosting, they’re more than happy to be invited.
One way to get a grip on the meal in advance is to
cook and freeze one of the most beloved courses of the meal— Chicken Soup with Matzo Balls (called Kneidlach in Yiddish).
Chicken soup has served as a staple in Jewish cooking for seemingly forever. Maimonides, the revered rabbi, physician, and philosopher (1135–1204) regarded chicken soup as beneficial for the ill and prescribed it for respiratory sicknesses. People refer to chicken soup as “Jewish Penicillin”, so of course that lit the fire under academia to test its efficacy. I’m not surprised to report that this concept was confirmed in 2000 through research at The University of Nebraska. Their study found that chicken soup can slow inflammation that occurs during colds and flu.
Chicken Soup became a staple for Jews living in the shtetl (the small towns and villages in eastern Europe) because that pot of soup, often prepared for the Sabbath meal, could be stretched into several meals.
Families would have, and still have, the soup, the vegetables (carrots, onions, celery, parsnips), the chicken fat or “schmaltz” which can be rendered from the chicken fat, along with “gribbenes” or fried chicken fat skin cracklings, the liver can be used for chopped liver, and the chicken itself, which can be eaten right from in the soup or made into a casserole or chicken salad for another meal. My mother also mashed the cooked lima beans with onion, spices, and oil to make a tasty dip. That’s a lot of eating from one chicken!
Chicken soup is also associated with the comfort, care and adherence to tradition that is part of many Jewish mothers repertoires. These days Jewish fathers can be found in the kitchen preparing a family recipe or making their own modifications.
But back to the chicken soup in your life later this month. You may have been freezing your soup for a while now, but freezing matzoh balls may come as a surprise. If frozen properly, they will still be light and fluffy the night of the seder. Roasted farfel, (technically a small pasta, but made of matzo for Passover) is baked with mostly egg yolks and salt. It stays fresh for at least a week in a sealed container but can also be frozen.
The following recipes for the soup course are my mother’s. The memories that make them great go beyond the delicious recipes.
When I cook them now, I love to comment to myself or whoever’s listening that the house smells like “Yuntuv” which is Yiddish (technically means “good day” but has come to mean cherished holidays).
The chicken soup aroma takes me back to Passover seders at my grandmom Tillie’s home where my mom and aunts would gather early in the afternoon to help prepare. When my grandmother passed the seder torch to my mom, the same aroma wafted through her home as my extended family sat down to decades of my mom’s seders. She was known as Nine Course Naomi.
A Zizen Pesach (Yiddish for a “Sweet Passover”) and Happy Passover to all who celebrate. As Jews at the shore and worldwide say at their seders, “Next year in Jerusalem!”
Naomi’s Chicken Soup
Serves approximately 16
Ingredients:
- 20 cups of water
- 2 T salt divided
- 1 T sugar
- 1 6-pound chicken, whole or cut up (you can ask the meat dept at ShopRite to cut it for you), cleaned and giblets removed
- 1 cup dry lima beans
- 1 large onion, peeled
- 4 large fresh large carrots, cut into chunks
- 6 large ribs, cut into chunks
- Celery leaves ]from one bunch of celery, chopped
- 1 large parsnip cut in large chunks
- 1 bay leaf
- 3 springs of dill and 3 springs of parsley
- ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
- 8 ounces fine or medium noodles, optional, cooked after or a dozen matzo balls, premade
Method:
Clean vegetables and place in a bowl of cold water. Set aside. Put 20 cups of water in a large soup pot. Add chicken and 1 T salt. Make sure pot is large enough to leave space at the top as you’ll be adding vegetables later. Cook over medium-low heat lightly covered. Remove foam as needed. After 1.5 hours, when beans are soft, add onion, carrot, celery leaves, parsnip, dill, parsley, the other T of salt, the T sugar and ¼ tsp pepper to taste.
Cover and continue cooking at low heat/simmer until vegetables are soft, about 40 minutes. Strain soup, removing bones, skin, and vegetables. Cut chicken into cubes or shred it. You can reserve the vegetables if they’re not too soft for your taste or chop some fresh ones to heat in the broth for 10 minutes before serving. Add cooked matzo balls or noodles, and warm through. Sprinkle each bowl with chopped dill and/or parsley.
If you place the soup in the refrigerator, the fat will rise to the top. You can skim some of this “schmaltz/fat to use in the matzo ball recipe. Leave some in the soup for flavor.
Fluffy Matzoh Balls
Makes about 10 1½” inch matzo balls
Ingredients:
- 1 cup Matzo Meal (gluten-free matzo meal available too)
- 4 large eggs
- ¼ cup oil, melted margarine or chicken schmaltz
- ¼ cup water or plain seltzer (seltzer/club soda a great choice for fluffiness)
- 1 tsp salt or to taste
- Pinch of ground pepper
Method:
Beat eggs. Add water, oil/margarine, or schmaltz. Mix well. Add matzo meal and stir thoroughly but do not overwork—that leads to hard matzo balls. Refrigerate for ½ hour to 1 hour.
Partially fill a large pot with water and bring to a boil
Moisten clean hands/palms with cold water.
Form mixture into balls about 1” in diameter. Drop balls into the boiling water. Once all of the balls are in the pot, reduce heat to low. Simmer covered for about 30 minutes. Don’t overcook. Remove with slotted spoon and drop directly into the soup or freeze.
To Freeze Matzo Balls:
Anything right off the stove is always better, but when feeding a crowd and time is of the essence, matzo balls actually freeze well and retain their flavor and texture.
Cool matzo balls to room temperature after cooking. Line a cookie sheet with wax or parchment paper, place the matzo balls on the tray with space between each, cover with silver foil or plastic wrap and place in the freezer for two hours until they get firm. Place in an airtight container and freeze. Defrost in the refrigerator the day before and heat gently in the soup before serving.
The Crowning Glory:
Easy Homemade Farfel
(roasted crushed matzo for soup)
Farfel is the Yiddish word for a small pellet or flake shaped pasta, but during Passover no wheat, barley, rye, spelt or oats are used, so Passover farfel is made of crushed matzo, egg yolks and salt.
This easy-to-make, 4-ingredient addition to the soup course puts it over the top. Everyone loves passing a bowl of homemade farfel around to add even more flavor and a little crunch to the matzo ball soup.
Easy Baked Farfel
Serves 12
- 3 cups matzo farfel (buy a box in the Passover section of the supermarket or crush your own matzos)
- 1 egg (whole)
- 3 egg yolks
- 1 ½ teaspoons kosher salt
- 5 T canola oil
Mix eggs, salt oil and farfel together. (Yolks are used primarily because whites can make the mixture gloppy and not as crunchy). Spread out flat on a cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees until farfel begins to turn golden brown, about 10-15 minutes. Break apart farfel with a spatula, turn and continue cooking for another 10 minutes or so. Once nicely browned, break into bite-size pieces and store in an airtight container. People love to much on any leftover farfel as they breeze in and out of the kitchen during Passover. Makes a great snack.
Lisa is an advertising copywriter, journalist, and columnist. She is a year ‘round Ventnor resident and her claim to fame is that she was a Lou’s waitress for four summers. She can be reached at redshoeslzs@gmail.com.
